The main consternation of Alien 3 seems to be around the death of Newt and Hicks. Now, I love Aliens (and Michael Biehn) just as much as the next guy and at the time I was sad to see them perish off-camera in rather rudimentary ways. But as the crew’s ship crash lands onto a Company-owned maximum-security prison/iron works/whatever, this time I began to see why that decision was made. Hicks was basically incapacitated and Newt, while cute and all, was still just a pesky pre-teen girl that would have otherwise been surrounded by the rapists and murderers on Fury 161. It’s tough to say but those characters had outlived their usefulness but Ripley, of course, has not.

Say what you want about the Alien series proper as a whole, but Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has always been the backbone and Alien 3 shows exactly why. As she is told by the medical officer Clemens (Charles Dance) that her companions have perished, Ripley still has the nagging thought that an alien is behind their demise even though she is curiously restrained in explaining that. After the bodies of Newt and Hicks are cremated and a rescue team has been summoned, Ripley receives confirmation that an alien was on-board and has likely infiltrated the small camp of prisoners and corrections officers.

Having watched the theatrical cut and the “assembly cut” back-to-back, the omissions that were made are puzzling. Even knowing about the longer, fuller cut in advance, the theatrical version seems either far too sloppily edited or too truncated to do the film any justice. Out of the twenty five remaining in the facility, only a handful are ever given any characterization (such as Charles Dutton‘s Dillion) or even names (like the survivor Morse) in the regular cut, leading to the bulk of the film just an alien chasing random dudes down dimly-yellow-tinged hallways. The “assembly cut” or as close to Fincher’s director’s cut that we will likely receive is about twenty five minute longer and features not only more prominent characterizations of the important inmates but also a quite enthralling plot point that was completely omitted from the final film.

Since I have watched an ungodly amount of Fincher films in the past month, it is easy to see the visual style that he would hold onto with following films. The low- and high-angled shots, the yellow hues that permeate, and even the emphasis on character rather than flashy visuals that would define him almost two decades later are present in Fincher’s debut film. Sadly, that mostly holds true for the “assembly cut” rather than the theatrical version since a good chunk of the story was left out in the latter version. Even the other little details like the grimy set-pieces or the ruthless anonymous thugs speak toward Fincher’s other works and they certainly stand out here as Fincher seems to be more interested in the visual than the constantly changing narrative.

Even though it has been largely criticized by the movie-watching community, Alien 3 is a worthy follow-up to James Cameron’s Aliens in that it is almost completely different in its execution. Aliens was more focused on non-stop action whereas Alien 3 is more of a melding of its two predecessors. There are many horror-esque moments especially as the prisoners do not know about the threat but yet still many action sequences such as the alien chasing men through endless corridors, all while it is scaling walls and ceilings. Those chase scenes close to the finale, and even those throughout the film, are captured with almost a raw intensity that defy you to be nonchalant during them. Even the assembly cut ending which still has Ripley sacrificing herself is more impactful as the queen does not bust out just before. It not only is more fitting for the ending of a Fincher film but also makes Ripley’s journey more impactful.

There’s tons of stuff to beat this movie up on from the cruddy CGI to the underdeveloped characters but Alien 3 was nowhere near as abysmal as I feared it would be. The assembly cut is the one to watch if you have the chance but even through the studio fuckery, the theatrical cut is still a pretty powerful film on its own, and one that tries to stand up to its bigger brothers in the franchise.

Think back to when we (proverbially speaking of course) were kids and there were globs of adolescent empowerment films about kids saving the day while the adults were just sitting on their thumbs. Writer and director Joe Cornish is clearly a member of that generation as the best description I can give of this film is The Goonies meets Alien. Set in a not-so-nice part of downtown London, our core cast consists of a gaggle of delinquent youths, some legitimately of the tougher sort, some not. The gang, led by Moses(!) (John Boyega) holds up the meek and defenseless Sam (Jodie Whittaker) on her way back to her block, otherwise known as an apartment building for all us ignorant American-types.

The mugging is interrupted by a projectile that destroys a car nearby and Moses is attacked while scrounging in the car by an unknown creature. Moses, not the kind willing to turn the other cheek, hunts down the being and kills it. The group brings it to Ron (Nick Frost) in an attempt to identify it as a hairless orangutan or something else. While there, they top off with ample amounts of weed since Ron runs the cannabis business inside the block for Hi-Hatz. It is not too long after that more things fall from the sky right outside the building and the tough youngsters suit up to wage war. Little did they know they were up against a few dozen feisty aliens who target the kids wherever they may go.

I’ll warn you now that you may want to turn your subtitles on while watching this. I blame equal parts poor sound design (the music drowns out the dialogue in quite a few places) and some contemporary English slang that I was quizzical on until I had the proper context. Nevertheless, Cornish quite effectively crafts the characters by way of these terms unbeknownst to a guy like me. I’m no expert and this may or may not be representative of the linguistics of London’s young adults but the many dialogue exchanges (especially in the early parts of the film) feel genuine, especially with the delivery from all of the actors. Seriously, the cultural barrier may be a factor, but there is not a single performance that I doubted during the film.

Even though the film takes place entirely in a single building and in its immediate surroundings, it is quite an adventure as the group of kids are chased around from floor to floor, apartment to apartment, with little down time in the mix. What down time there is usually provides some quick comedic bits especially with Ron and Brewis as they sit and ponder an alien invasion while getting stoned or the preteen troublemakers Probs and Mayhem as they desperately try to keep up their delinquency with the big boys. The rest of the time though is used to effectively weave elements of action, sci-fi, and horror all together as those darn aliens creep up at the most inopportune times.

I must give Cornish and the special effects teams mounds of credit for the aliens as well. Their design is very minimalist yet effectively menacing and creepy especially as you see their pronounced features in the backgrounds of dimly-lit hallways or outside of windows. There are quite a few moments that, while not “scary” per se, are very tense with the monsters popping out after the group. While some of the cast is either in too few scenes to make a difference, there are many characters that stick out, either with random quips or complete character arcs. Of all, Boyega as Moses is one of the more compelling written and performed characters in a while as he gradually learns to embrace responsibility and self-sacrifice.

There is a ton more that I quite enjoyed in this film that I just briefly touched on, but suffice to say, all of the hype and acclaim that Attack the Block received is well-deserved. As a bonus, you can even make an effective drinking game out of the abundance of times bruv, fam, or innit are said.

Doctor Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns home to Santa Mira, California with reports that most of the town wanted to see him for undisclosed reasons. Now though, everyone seems to be healthy and normal aside from the little boy who is almost mincemeat after running into the street trying to escape his mother or the woman who declares that her uncle is not really her uncle but an imposter with the same appearance and memories. Bennell quickly dismisses the claims and refers the woman to the town psychiatrist. Later while dining with love interest Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), Bennell receives an urgent call and goes to the home of Jack and Teddy who have found a body in their house without any defining features or even fingerprints. Soon Bennell, Becky, and company discover the town is no longer occupied by humans, just empty shells of their former friends and colleagues.

Even though it seems overdone (since it kind of is), the story behind Invasion is still quite effective, enhanced here by great performances and the beauty of black-and-white cinematography. This is, in a way, a more frightening tale than a typical zombie or slasher film primarily because the protagonists are mostly in the dark about what is happening and even once they do figure things out, there is no way of telling who is human and who is not. This uncertainty has strong roots in the ongoing Cold War when the film was made and the fear and paranoia can be easily supplanted with enemies of the state or something else more common in the natural world.

Thanks to the great performances and the direction by Don Siegel, most everything in the film is suspenseful and even a bit off-kilter before we learn of what is really going on. The one problem with the film that is apparently widely hated is the opening scene showing that Bennell has escaped Santa Mira and is telling the story to a doctor elsewhere. This, and his accompanying spotty narration, almost remove any real tension since we know that he will survive. Yet, as the film wound down, I was still waiting for the “downer” ending that the rest of the movie commanded but due to alleged studio tinkering, we receive a happy-ish ending instead. Again, I haven’t seen any of the other films based off of the same story so I don’t know if that’s a common theme but I hope not.

Brooks’ film works best when it breaks the 4th wall and pokes fun at unrelenting merchandising of lunchboxes, flamethrowers, and toilet paper. I especially enjoy the one-off jokes such as the cross-eyed gunner Asshole or Mr. Rental. The cast is largely decent considering the unevenness of the story with John Candy, Brooks himself as two characters, and the lovely Daphne Zuniga as the standouts. Some laugh-out-loud moments exist but those are buried too far under countless bits that fail. Watch it for nostalgia’s sake but not to expect a good film. That is, until Brooks’ realizes the potential for a touched-up Special Edition.

Ghost from the Machine (or Phasma Ex Machina) is writer/director Matt Osterman’s feature film debut. It had a budget of $25,ooo. If my review doesn’t give you a clue how good the film is, maybe this will: Universal Pictures is remaking it already.

Cody (Sasha Andreev) and his younger brother James (Max Hauser) lost their parents due to a car accident. Cody is riddled with guilt as he blames himself.  He dropped out of college, does not have a job and is living off of the insurance money from the accident. He becomes obsessed with the thought of getting his parents back and spends most of his time and money constructing an electrical device. In a nutshell, Cody basically believes that there is a shortage of a certain type of energy between our world and the other side. He believes that if he can supply this energy there would be no separation and he can then be reunited with his parents. This has caused him to in effect neglect James, whom he is supposed to be taking care of. James spends most of his time wrapped up in first person shooters and causing mischief at school. Because Cody is so obsessed, he has repeatedly caused James to be late to school so often that the Principal questions his ability to be a legal guardian and calls CPS. CPS gives Cody simple instructions: Get James to school on time everyday and he must behave while there. Otherwise, James will be removed from the home. As Cody gets further along with his machine, odd things start to occur in their house as well as in others.

Andreev is excellent as Cody. His Cody is teetering on the edge of madness. His sanity is still harnessed due to his firm belief that what he is doing will work. He gets excited about things that would terrify you and me. He is simply not able to properly supervise his brother and may even see it as a distraction. When threatened with legal action, he makes small attempts to be a guardian but the closer he comes to completion of his device, his obsession overtakes him. Andreev plays this superbly with well delivered dialogue and relaxed realism. I keep using words like “obsession,” and “madness,” which are accurate, but he is not moving at a hundred miles an hour and completely irrational like most caricatures of insane people are. He’s just plagued by guilt and the desire to quell it.

Matthew Feeney turns in a pretty decent performance as Tom, another electronics wizard that gets pulled into the project before he even knows it exists.

This film has no special effects. In fact, there is never any “supernatural” feeling in the film at all. No deformed ghosts scaring the hell out of house cats and children, there are no “hauntings.”  This may not be the first use of this story, but it was refreshing to see it treated in this fashion.

The film felt a little slow for a short while, but once the stranger events start to occur, it becomes clear that this slow pace was necessary. By the end of the film the progression makes sense as a whole. Then you are smacked in the face with the disheartening unhappy ending. The ending may upset some people, but it makes logical sense and evokes the strong emotions felt through the rest of the film already.

This film is seriously impressive. Osterman has shown that he is a great director and writer. I very much await more work from him.

Check out our interview with director Matt Ostermann.

The late 1800s must have been a terribly interesting time what with the recent conclusion of the Civil War, a burgeoning industrial nation threatening the traditional old-timey towns, and of course those greedy, gold-seeking aliens who snatch up unwilling science project participants. But no air conditioning. That’s a deal breaker for me. When Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of nowhere, he doesn’t seem fazed by the lack of air conditioning, or even his lack of memory. After dispatching a few guys and acquiring a dog, he meanders into town where he is stitched up by the preacher (Clancy Brown), accosts the local entitled douchebag, and is arrested by the Sheriff for outstanding warrants of mayhem and murder.

Jake even has a history with the local douchebag’s father, and grizzled businessman, Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) who is still peeved that Jake ran off with something of minor interest: a booty of gold. As Jake and douchebag are loaded up for transport to the federal marshals, flying alien craft invade the town, blowing stuff up, and snatching up poor hardworking townsfolk. Jake manages to take down one of vessels courtesy of an technologically anachronistic bracelet attached to his wrist, causing the other craft to retreat. Jake, Dolarhyde, the preacher, and Sam Rockwell then set off in pursuit of the aliens to free their people.

Considering that there are no less than five credited screenwriters plus an additional screen story credit, Cowboys & Aliens could easily have been an awful mess, not unlike another based-on-a-comic western from last summer. That’s Jonah Hex in case you were wondering. But the majority of the story is pretty good, especially at the beginning as Jake and the townsfolk are scrambling to understand what the hell is going on. As everything unfolds, we get a good look at this lowly town just trying to scrap by and the people that inhabit it. Most summer movies (hell, a lot of movies period) skip any sort of characterization but we get that in spades here. It is nice to actually be able to connect with a character before they are carted off to the mothership or killed.

It is unfortunate, however, that the rest of the movie did not feel as real as the characters. Surely, no one can argue that Favreau is an incompetent director and he shows here that he has the skills to create some tense and exciting sequences such as when the band of townies run across Jake’s old gang or the remaining Apache tribe in the area. But, the fact that CG is used entirely for the aliens is disappointing. I can understand for practical purposes, a CG flying craft is much easier than a practical one. But that the aliens are entirely CG is almost inexcusable, especially for a movie that is almost positioned as the anti-2011 summer movie. The design of the aliens is a bother since they really have no defining characteristics except for their bizarre physiology. Their motive is questionable as well but that is all but called out by Olivia Wilde’s character.

The real problem begins once the human characters launch their assault on their aliens. Everything up to then is solid, if not spectacular. But the final act of the movie pulls out the cliché checklist and follows it to a T especially when it comes to the payoff to poorly written character moments, hero moments from previously less than heroic characters, and the conclusion of character arcs you can see from a mile away. For me, this was not enough to destroy the excitement up until that point, but it is a bad ending tacked onto an otherwise good film.

It’s a shame though that the film did not deliver on its promise all around. The cinematography was beautiful (in fairness, a lot of westerns are), the music by Harry Gregson-Williams was appropriate (more than I can say for that Mastadon BS from Hex), and the characters were fleshed out so you actually give a damn about them. Favreau has done well for himself with the Iron Man series and C&A proves that he can branch out successfully. Just leave the written-by-committee at home next time.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with “romance” movies. They just are not designed with my sensibilities in mind. I can still objectively review them from a critical standpoint to determine if they are completely bland and unsurprisingly (not unlike Love and Other Drugs) or a remarkably decent story merely concocted around a lovey-dovey tale like this film. Written and directed by George Nolfi, the film is based on a Philip K. Dick short story called Adjustment Team. I have not read the story (this comes as a surprise?) thus I am not sure if the wishy-washy sentimentality was present in the original, or just filled in by the filmmakers to avoid the wrath of thousands of moviegoers conditioned to accept the lowest common denominator in stories, especially those regarding the L word.

At its core, The Adjustment Bureau is a fine film. Matt Damon is quite charismatic as David Norris, the young hotshot would-be senator from New York. As he works out his concession speech in despair over the crushing defeat, David meets Elise (Blunt) who turns his frown upside-down with an encouraging talk and a passionate kiss. She soon is chased out of the hotel by security but David cannot shake her from his thoughts. After a “chance” reunion a few weeks later, David gets her number but quickly loses it as he discovers that a secretive team of … something not human, apparently has fumbled and David was not supposed to see her ever again.

David is sat down by the bland-looking gentlemen of the titular organization for a bit of exposition. The men act as real-life choreographers, putting people in certain places with certain events set to occur to shape their subjects’ path through life. David responds by declaring that he has free will. One of the inconspicuously dressed men informs him that he is free to his choice of toothpaste or beverage but the real heavy lifting is left up to this group. They tell him to never reveal their identity to anyone else for fear of a “reboot,” essentially erasing his memories and personality. Well, that’s actually a pretty good definition of a reboot.

Expectedly, there is a lot of talk about free will and destiny. David is determined to prove he can shape his own life even with a bureaucracy attempting to prevent that. These are the same guys in suits who declare that their period of intervention brought the Renaissance and the Enlightenment while mankind flying solo crafted the Dark Ages and WWI. Really, all it stands to illustrate is that David is madly in love with Elise and will stop at nothing to be with her. So, essentially it boils down to just about every other damn love story I’ve seen, except this time with sci-fi elements! Damon and Blunt are great in their roles and fortunately exert a lot of chemistry in their scenes together. There is a lot of heartache for both characters during the film and their interactions sell that quite well. The suits in the Bureau are not necessarily menacing, only in a “man following orders” sort of way.

Without going into spoiler-y specifics, the film closes with a not-quite “happily ever after” sort of ending, but it is pretty darn close. It feels very cheesy and directed at the romantic-seeking audience base that the movie caters to (not the marketing though as I recall). It’s all well and good but the end almost negates all of the drama and conflict from the preceding 100 minutes or so in a syrupy-sweet way that struck me as odd. For his directorial debut, Nolfi does an admirable job crafting sympathetic characters in a movie that normally I would be less inclined to watch. He touched on some deep meanings about life and humanity but wasted those on a story not worthy of such depth.

Now, with all that out of the way, this movie opens with a team of archaeologists exploring a cave and some of the most horrific line deliveries in recorded history. Throughout this picture the acting ranges in quality from stiff and unnatural to hammy and laughable, but what we get inside the first five minutes of screen time is absolutely terrifying.  Thankfully, the acting never gets any worse than this and most of these guys in the cave get torched after one of the diggers hits a glowing rock with a hatchet. A couple of years later, one of the surviving archaeologists from earlier, Dr. Campbell, (Richard B. Livingston) is heading an excavation to unearth a massive dinosaur skeleton. A photojournalist is dispatched to the sight who’s name escapes me because he serves no purpose to the plot other than to introduce the audience to other, more important characters. He meets Campbell’s sometimes British assistant Holly, (Donna Philipson) and Campbell’s old and seemingly insane associate Dr. Hughes. (Harrison Young) Hughes has come to warn everyone that the skeleton they are uncovering, which he calls Yonggary, will destroy mankind. He apparently learned this from some unexplained prophecy written in hieroglyphics in that cave from the opening scene. Of course no one buys this prophecy crap, not even I do and I watched the whole movie, and Dr. Hughes is escorted out of the camp. It turns out that there have been a lot of ominous and plot convenient fatal accidents happening around the dig site, but Dr. Campbell acts like a monomaniacal ass hole the entire time and tries to play them off as run-of-the-mill industrial accidents and threatens people to keep quiet about them.

At the same time the military, represented here by the very fictional United National Defense Agency, is having trouble with some missing satellites. Turns out there’s a big, badly rendered alien spaceship special effect orbiting the Earth, and the hand puppet aliens inside, that also speak English, are here to wipe out humanity and conquer the planet. For what reason, we don’t know, but they intend to do this thing by reanimating the giant fossilized skeleton. The evil insectoid aliens, because there are no good insectoid aliens, fire a massive energy beam down to Earth that resurrects Yonggary and puts muscle and skin back on him. In typical monster movie fashion, Yonggary, who is being controlled by the aliens via a diamond shaped device on his forehead, is set loose to destroy humanity. Let me just recap that. The aliens came to Earth two hundred million years ago, found a giant monster (apparently the only one of its kind) fitted it with a brain control device, then let it die and waited for hundreds of millions of year to come back to Earth, which they knew would eventually be controlled by the human race, and then bring a fossilized monster, which has just recently been conveniently unearthed, back to life to kill all humans. That is their master plan. Why not just return to Earth while humans are still living in caves and conquer the Earth then? How about invade Earth with more than one battleship and wipe out civilization yourselves? But it’s this flimsy premise that finally gets us to the giant monster wrecking stuff portion of the film. Anyway, after the fake army throws helicopters and jets at the monster to no avail, they turn to a newer, more high-tech option to take the monster down. That option is to send in guys wearing jet-packs and fly around Yonggary like tiny, foul mouthed gnats and shoot at him with assault rifles. The strike vehicles with missiles and large caliber guns didn’t work, so they send in smaller, less well armored troops with smaller guns to finish the job. How does this make any logical sense? Needless to say, there are a lot of holes in this plot. It’s just to bad that the giant monster they’re shooting at is so bland, unoriginal, and badly made. If I was director Shim Hyung-rae and I saw these lifeless, rubbery, completely unnatural looking creature effects during production, I would have scrapped those scenes and re-shot them with a man in a foam-rubber Yonggary costume. This computer generated abomination actually looks worse than the worst guy-in-a-rubber-suit effect.

On top of all the acting, writing, and special effects problems, this movie is so full of cliches and scenes that seem almost completely ripped off from other films that I had to watch it twice just to find them all. It follows all of the giant monster movie tropes that have been cultivated over three decades of kaiju cinema. Aliens start out in control the creature to use as a super weapon to crush humanity. The monster runs a muck in a major city. All of the major human characters are either scientists, in the military, or in the news media. And, after Yonggary is freed from his alien overlords, those aliens bring in another monster so the two beasts can slug it out in a major metropolitan area. However, the film seems to take more inspiration from certain Roland Emmerich movies than it does from classic monster films. The aliens bare a striking resemblance to the invaders from Independence Day, and there are several scenes involving fighter pilots firing missiles and spouting jargon that sounds like it was lifted right out of that film. The director also makes the mistake of trying to recreate several scenes from the 1998 American Godzilla, including Yonggary dueling with a squadron of helicopters and many instances of missiles failing to lock on to the creature and striking nearby buildings instead. I’m sure one could make a wonderful drinking game out of this movie. Every time the old crazy guy mentions something about the supposed prophecy that no body cares about, take a shot. Every time you see a bad composite image, take a shot. Every time Holly forgets to talk with her British accent, take a shot. Every time there’s a scene where the stupid aliens talk about something that we just saw happen on screen thirty seconds ago, take a shot. Come to think of it, where is my bourbon? I need to drink the pain away.

You could call Altered States a love story, because that’s what it is, but you would be doing director Ken Russell and writer Paddy Chayefsky a disservice. For the actual love story parts of it are merely the filler in an absurdly religious and cosmic journey that you really aren’t supposed to take seriously. It wouldn’t be the first disservice done to Chayefsky (at least in his opinion) in regard to the film; he had a some kind of dispute with the film’s first director and he later changed his name (to his real first and middle names) on the film due to his disapproval of it.

Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) is studying schizophrenia using sensory deprivation tanks. At some point he places himself in the tank under the observation of his colleague, Arthur Rosenberg (Bob Balaban). After having hallucinations in the tank and reliving the death of his father,  he becomes obsessed. Fascinated with religious experiences, he becomes consumed with finding the “first self.” He becomes unhappy with the convention of marriage and domestic life, and gets separated from his wife Emily (Blair Brown). He goes to Mexico, and ingests a concoction that causes a number of intense hallucinations, prompting him to take it back to the states where he can study it. “Studying it” simply means that he takes it prior to immersing himself in the deprivation tank and thus combining the two experiences. He then begins to “externalize” his visions, and seems to regress genetically, and then reconstitutes. However, each regression places him further backward genetically, and even seems to “de-evolve” and have visions when out of the tank. He explains this with, “Our other states of consciousness are just as real as our waking states and the drug externalizes them.” His wife and another colleague become quite concerned with his “research.”

The point of the film where I decided I couldn’t possibly be expected to take it seriously is when Jessup regresses to an ape like creature, and begins wreaking havoc, finds himself in a zoo and eats a sheep. That seemed a bit much. Even more so than when he turns into some kind of cast member from an Ah-Ha music video.

The concept of this movie is actually really fascinating. And it does work well in execution sometimes. A lot of the film, though,  was a little too much. Since the characters in the main cast are geniuses, a lot of the dialogue is comprised of words that mean nothing to me, and spoken at times at a pace I did not are to keep up with. I sort of got the sense that this was maybe intentional, keeping with the overall nonsensical tone of events, but it did not work in that capacity. It just kind of made me lose interest in an otherwise normal scene.

The regressions were actually very interesting, except for that ape man scene. With the first regression, he comes out unable to speak, and apparently a “quasi-simian.” He then begins to have visions and change physically. He then has the ape-man episode which only further peaks his curiosity as opposed to scaring the hell out of him. Another episode turns him in to cosmic energy and he witnesses the birth of the human. I found this scene to be quite fantastic, especially as Emily is fighting her way to Jessup through a whirlpool of primordial ooze (or whatever) to reach him. It’s is almost powerful enough to draw a tear as she touches him and brings him back to this world. I understand that the primitive man section was sort of a logical step before this point, but man, it was just really silly. The ending also, reminding us that this in fact, is a love story, is pretty gripping, even though a bit fantastical (and again, reminiscent of an 80′s music video).

But wasn’t the whole thing fantastical? Well, yes, but really only in concept (even though this was inspired by true events). As fantastical as it was, within the context of the film, it fit in nicely.

William Hurt’s performance was quite strong, and impressive for his screen debut. It was directed quite well also, but that doesn’t matter. You are led where Russell leads you and if you can’t keep up or don’t like it, tough.

It’s pretty entertaining, and possibly the most meaningless philosophical film you will run across. As thought provoking as it appears to be, it really is not. Not a bad film to spend an afternoon with.